Description of Research Expertise

The lung has an immunoprotective, hyporesponsive environment that helps prevent inappropriate immune and inflammatory responses to inhaled toxic, infectious or allergenic material. The long-term goal of my research is to unravel the the mechanisms that impair the innate and adaptive immune crosstalk during development of allergic and infectious inflammatory changes in the lung. To investigate T-cell related pathologies such as the allergic airway response my laboratory has established various in vitro and in vivo (rodent) model systems suitable to study pulmonary inflammation as well as the resulting changes in lung physiology. My laboratory is one of the few that study the importance of the pulmonary surfactant and in particular, the lung collectins, (SP-A and SP-D), in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Our observations support the novel concept that these lectin-like innate immune molecules play an essential protective regulatory role during inflammatory changes. Our studies are important because they may provide unique, novel therapeutical opportunities to control and manipulate the immune system in the lung.
Keywords: pulmonary medicine, allergy and clinical immunology, asthma, airway inflammation, lung physiology, cell biology, animal models, tissue culture, molecular biology, pulmonary surfactant, T cells, cytokines